The Shared Landscapes performance takes visitors through a series of experiences in a forest landscape, transforming an otherwise ordinary walking process into an awareness of the forest's layers and its impact. This performance allows the audience to simultaneously become aware of the forest's positive effects on their well-being and understand other kinds of the environmental and social dimensions of urban forest functions. Through group talks, stories, musical interludes, dialogues and guided observations of tree canopies, forest habitats, and plants, the performance gradually shifts the audience from unconscious enjoyment of the forest landscape to a more informed relationship with the forest and its environment, placing the experience in perfect harmony with current circumstances in the environemnt and society. This way the performance follows the needs of people and citites and helps them t ofind their own way to reconnect with nature

Today, influenced by climate change and other challenges of future, urban societies seek nature's help in all possible ways, aiming to connect with, understand it, and bring it closer to humnans and their living environment. Trees are symobilcally moving from forests into cities, where they are ment to retain heat and precipitation on streets, squares, buildings, and rooftops, creating a more bearable climate, a safe and healthy living environment, and public health benefits for all. Urban forests are similar to public parks, and green spaces characterized by their equal benefit to all residents. Scientific insights into the importance of nature, forests, and even individual trees in mitigating the causes and consequences of climate change have been translated into new public policies and conceptual approaches, such as rewilding cities, green infrastructure, and nature-based solutions.

Cities are receiving recommendations from various professionsa and organizations, including the World Health Organization and the European Commission, to raise standards of protecting and developing natural areas and green spaces, and to particularly take good care of urban trees and forests. In this effort, cities need all the help they can get, including support from their residents. In climate change adaptation processes and measures transcend boundaries between sectors, professions, and ownerships, with integration and cooperation of actors as key principles for effective action. And in this framework the residents are increasingly taking on critical roles in ensuring the effective adaptation of cities. They act as responsible users, custodians, owners and caregivers of existing trees and green spaces, and the co-creators of new planting and arrangements. Performances like Shared Landscapes align with this spirit, raising visitors' awareness of the forest's importance and enabling them to understand and find their role in forest management and broader local society's environmental efforts.

The Forest and Climate Change: Nature as Humanity’s Ally

Today, climate change transforms nature into our vital ally in enhancing resilience to changing conditions while simultaneously threatening both nature and humans. People enter this vicious cycle with hope that conserving nature and strengthening its processes can help mitigate the causes and consequences of climate change.

In this context, there is growing awareness of species extinction and the importance of preserving biodiversity. Images of polar bears wandering across melting glaciers have deeply impacted us. However, much less is known about the endangered status of plants and their crucial role in supporting life on earth. Plants and the natural processes within their ecosystems have the ability to serve as carbon sinks (addressing causes) while mitigating heat, retaining precipitation (addressing consequences), and ensuring air, water, and soil quality, which are fundamental to human survival.

When Shared Landscapes was performed across various countries, the European Parliament was debating a new nature restoration law. Political consensus was forming around the need for a unified legal framework for member states to ensure the protection of nature and its positive effects on people and the environment. Additionally, professional services in European cities require further support and a standardized framework for their efforts. This highlights that awareness of nature's importance for survival has not yet reached the necessary levels among local communities and states. Changes in attitudes toward nature, tree preservation, and the development of urban forestry are far from self-evident.

Raising awareness about forests, trees, and other plants, along with environmental conservation, is now more relevant than ever. Art plays a crucial role in this efforts. Recent years have seen an increase in performances and productions that offer audiences a chance to deepen their connection to nature and understand its importance for our survival and future. Audiences discover new dimensions of their relationship with nature, search for their role in its protection, and find the strength to act. While the tree has already been at the center of the staging of the play in Ljubljana, the forest has not yet been given such a place, even though it would also have a lot to say.

The performance is slowly to start. The audience gathering casually dressed at the forest's edge on a bright summer early afternoon, all ready for an unusual cultural event amidst mosquitoes and ticks. People look around, wondering where the action will start and who else is attending. The forest isnt typically visited in large organised groups following strict programm, usually the forest is visited for more personal and friends and family  pleasure and joy, peace and recreation, maybe foraging for mushrooms and berries. Here the attendees are questioning themselves if the performance relates to the paricular forest in Ljubljana and why anyone would wish to stage a performance in a forest  that seems to be giving us perfect perfomanses by itself without needing any kind of special dramatization or direction.

Caroline Barneaud and Stephan Koegi from the Rimini Protocol collective, imagined that, together with their co-creators, they would move visitors out of the comfort of the ordinary and awaken a new interest in the forest by creating a series of stories and experiences in the forest space in each the city that is going to host the performans. The performance comprises seven scenes, employing various artistic approaches, from walking and pausing to lying on soft forest soil and floating above tree canopies. Enhanced by tools, sharp hearing, and focused observations, the audience experiences stories, testimonies, and facts about forests, their history, current uses, and conditions, as well as narratives about the environment, climate change, scientific research, and reflections on the future.

Image 5, 6: The forest as a setting and subject of the performance Shared Landscapes in Ljubljana and the residents' rally against logging in the same forest ona a different location a year and a half before the art performance.


Everything falls into place as the audience relaxes and embraces the afternoon sequence of events  in the forest and follows the instruction to paritcipate. The tidied space at the start of the performance, discussions about the forest through headphones, live stories from a person in a wheelchair and a farmer on a tractor, a shared meal in a clearing, and musical interludes among tall ferns all combine to create a coherent narrative. This brings together the audience's deep, sometimes unconscious and inexplicable affinity for forests and trees with the environmental and societal challenges of the present. It helps them understand their feelings, actions, and the simultaneous significance and vulnerability of the forest.

By the end of the day, enriched with new experience and insights, the audience shares a renewed appreciation for the urban forest and leaves the forest scenery feeling content. This well-being is created by the forest itself—its trees, undergrowth, birds—and the shared experiences with others.

Another drama in forest

The forest where Shared Landscapes tooks place in summer 2024 holds a special place in the history, landscape, and life of Ljubljana's residents. This forest is part of the city’s central park and an expansive urban woodland that stretches into the city center as one of its green corridors. From the city center beneath the castle, the event space is barely three kilometers away in a straight aerial line, with most of the route winding through the park and forest.

In the city's past, authorities and citizens together ensured that this forest was preserved from deforestation and urban development. The forest’s owners have always had to consider the needs of residents when managing it. Forested slopes are a key part of the city's cultural and spatial identity, forming a harmonious natural and park-like setting within a protected area of natural and cultural heritage.

Another drama began in this forest over a year before the Shared Landsape performance. During the New Year period, a time when residents of Ljubljana traditionally take walks through the city's park and forest, reports of extensive tree felling on the slopes surfeced. The rumors sparked public concern, leading to debates about why so many mature trees had been cut at one period of time in so limited area, and what the nature protection agency thinks about it. The Youth for climate justice and civil society activists raised their voices, prompting walks to the forest to uncover the situation firsthand.

In the following days, new spread online, and the public searched eagerly for answers to stop the felling and ensure transparency of actions. The scale of logging—healthy, mature trees stacked in piles throughout the park—was unprecedented and understandably upset residents. People are deeply connected to their forest, they go visit it regularly and share many memorable moment, they are well aware of its importance for their health and well-being, and increasingly understanding its role in addressing climate change. Public outcry demanded explanations and a pause in the felling.

A sequence of events followed: press conferences, forest visits, media interviews, and roundtables involving civil society, forestry experts, and nature protection representatives. Activists emphasized the public’s right to be informed and included in decisions about their living environment, menitoning the Aarhus conventions and the right to participation nd healthy environment. Meanwhile, representatives of the city and forestry services defended the logging as necessary, planned, and compliant with regulations, arguing that it was announced in the media and on-site.

After certain time the situation changed with a statement from the nature protection agency, expressing professional disagreement with the scale of logging in a protected area. This led to a temporary suspension, and by the end of that winter, the extent of logging was somewhat reduced due to public pressure, civil society efforts, and media coverage. This real-life drama symbolically conected with the Shared Landscapes performance. While residents follow the art performance rumors were sparking about another large-scale felling planned in the city , this time at the castle hill in the city center.

The Forest is Ours

Human relationships with forests are deeply rooted in evolution and shaped by cultural practices. People are especially attached to forests near their homes, regularly using them, creating memories, and associating them with a sense of place and belonging. Forest trees and urban greenery create safe, functional, and inspiring spaces for experiences. The beneficial impact of forests and trees on human well-being, health, and the quality of the urban environment are the reason for the fact that urban communities have historically protected urban and peri-urban forests from excessive logging and construction. An more, they even plantere trees, and designed urban spaces to replicate the atmosphere of forests, making them a shared living environment.

In Slovenia, forest spaces are generally accessible to the public. Forest owners traditionally allow walking on trails and collecting forest produce for personal use. In Ljubljana, the forest nearest to the city center has, since medieval times, been managed with residents' needs in mind. Non-owners were allowed to gather firewood and forest fruits. For centuries, local authorities, forest owners, and residents protected the wooded city slopes from development, preserving Ljubljana's unique urban structure, park areas, and exceptional natural and cultural heritage.

The urban forest that hosted Shared Landscapes in Ljubljana operates as a public space, regarded by residents as part of their shared environment and common good. It is used similarly to urban parks, squares, and streets—a place for free use, recreation, and social connection. The community's concern about changes in this forest, such as logging, is reasonable and legitimate. Today including residents in forest management plans and decisions about large interventions is normal and necessary.

As cities and societies face climate change, the importance of urban forests and greenery grows. There is increasing global emphasis on planting new trees and preserving all existing ones, including older and deteriorating specimens. The 3-30-300 rule has gained attraction worldwide, highlighting the importance of seeing three trees from one's home, having 30% tree canopy coverage in cities, and ensuring a maximum 300-meter distance to accessible green spaces. Developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by Professor Cecil Konijnendijk, this formula quickly gained global recognition.
Existing and newly planted trees, forest patches, and urban woodlands are becoming the foundation of cities’ resilience to climate change. Under the European Green Deal, the European Commission adopted a biodiversity strategy aiming to plant three billion new trees by 2030. The Dutch government has conducted nationwide analyses of urban canopy coverage to support fair and effective climate adaptation where residents need it most. Urban forests, trees, and green spaces are now considered critical infrastructure for public health, well-being, environmental quality, and social equity. Their benefits extend to enhancing open public spaces, ensuring the best possible living  conditions for all. Residents participate in urban forestry efforts, contributing to planting, caring for new trees, and seasonal activities such as clearing undergrowth and maintaining trails. 

                   

Images 8 and 9: The cultural and artistic community plays an important role in the search for new connection with nature on local and internationa level. The first image shows the KUD Obrat collective in a conversation at the Onkraj gradbišča community garden in Ljubljana, while the other is a part an exhibiton by slovene artist Polonca Lovšin called What does the forest say?

In this new, cllimate resilient kind of scenarios residents are well informed about forest management and involved in decisions about new interventions to act accordingly. In this kind of urban forest's management culture people are attracted to the forest and urban nature for its own sake, but if the visit is enriched by interesting topical stories and additional artistic experiences like in the case of Shared Lndscapes, a common walk through the forest is all the more interesting.

The idea of Shared Landscapes is therby perfectly aligned with the environmental and societal context of today. When arrived to Ljubljana it araised huge interest, all the repetitions were almost fully occupied, people came with diverse intentions and mainly persist till the end. It was a long performacne but meaningfull one. It gave people an opportunity to subtly integrate their own exepriences with the broader perspectives of urban forest and environment and assured them that caring for their forest is necessary and needed. This are powerfull messages for the future of urban forests an trees in the city.